Maccabee campaigns of 163 BC

During the

The Maccabees did not in general hold the territory they fought in during this period, but rather engaged in raids on opposing power centers and retributive attacks on anti-Jewish populations. The book 1 Maccabees describes a vicious campaign of extermination on both sides: the Gentiles were out to slaughter the Jews, and the Maccabees massacred Gentiles they believed involved, burning down their towns as intimidation and revenge. The Maccabees invited Jews living in hostile territory back to Judea as refugees and escorted them back under the safety of their army.

Primary sources

The campaigns against Timothy (Greek: Timotheus) and the local

In 164 BC, the Seleucids sent a major expedition to restore order to the Judean countryside led personally by Regent Lysias, who administered the western half of the Seleucid Empire while King Antiochus IV was on campaign in the eastern provinces. However, the Seleucid force was forced to withdraw by a combination of the Battle of Beth Zur as well as the death of Antiochus IV. Lysias returned to the capital Antioch to stave off any succession challenges to the young boy king Antiochus V Eupator and thus defend his own authority as Regent of the entire Empire. The Maccabees took Jerusalem and were now able to extend their authority while the main Seleucid army was distracted; only local garrisons and hostile local militias were left to stop them during the next year of 163 BC. In this time period, only Judea truly had a strong majority of Jews; many outlying regions, while having substantial Jewish populations, had many non-Jews. Relations apparently collapsed between Jews and Gentiles during the radicalization spurred by the revolt, so the Maccabees went on campaign to protect the outlying Jews and attack hostile Gentiles.

Campaigns

Idumea

The Maccabees under

Simon Thassi led 3,000 soldiers to Galilee to fight there. He pursued the local Gentiles "to the gate of Ptolemais" although did not besiege the city; he too escorted back a large group of Jewish refugees to Judea with him.^[4]

Coastal Greek towns

The coast of the Eastern Mediterranean was in this era dominated by Greek-friendly cities who participated in the broader Greek world trading network; the Seleucids referred to the region as Paralia. While Jews existed in these cities, they were a minority, and the cities were generally hostile to the Maccabee cause. Commanders named Joseph and Azariah attacked to the west of Judea at the town of Jamnia (Yavneh), but were repulsed: according to 1 Maccabees by Seleucid general Gorgias himself, who served in other battles of the Revolt such as the Battle of Emmaus. The Maccabees suffered 2,000 dead in their defeat and retreat. Judas would later return personally to the area, but apparently lost some troops near Marisa; he continued on to Azotus and successfully plundered the town before returning to Judea.^[4]

2 Maccabees describes a raid against Joppa and Jamnia after the residents there murdered some of the local Jews. In it Judas penetrates the cities and burns the ships in their harbors. He kills the murderers in Joppa, but declines to conquer either city. The historicity on such successful raids is considered chancy as 1 Maccabees clearly describes Jamnia as not falling to the Maccabees, and Joppa was a fortified port in the era, unlikely to be easily raided.^[5]

The book of 1 Maccabees archaically refers to the area as the "land of the Philistines" for the same reason as calling the Edomites the "sons of Esau"; the Philistines were long relegated to ancient history, but it made for a Biblical allusion to describe the territory and frame the Maccabee expedition in the language of ancient Jewish heroes. The author of 1 Maccabees also blames the priests killed near Marisa for disobeying orders out of a desire to do a brave deed. While possible, the author is sufficiently biased in favor of Judas Maccabeus that it is also possible that the author interpreted any setbacks as due to defiance of his orders rather than other factors.^[4]

Scholarly analysis

1 Maccabees contains brief letters requesting help from the Maccabees against Timothy from the Jews of Gilead at Dathema, as well as another letter from the Jews of Galilee requesting aid there. John Grainger, a historian skeptical of the reliability of the books of Maccabees, argues these letters were potentially postfactum inventions made to provide additional justification for the expeditions. While granting that the situation between Jews and Gentiles was likely tense, Grainger believes that the expeditions were more likely driven by a combination of pre-emptive defensive moves to weaken nearby sources of Seleucid power, an attempt to gather needed manpower for Judas's armies by going on a recruiting drive, and a looting expedition. He also argues that these raids probably did not stretch as far as claimed. The book 1 Maccabees was likely written under the reign of John Hyrcanus, an era where the Hasmonean state had expanded its borders beyond Judea. To Grainger, the book may be trying to justify the conquests in the time of the author (~130–100 BC) by prefiguring them in Judas's time and giving them a moral arc of rescue of fellow Jews and punishment to enemies of the Jews.^[5]

References